All I had were my letters from home; it was those which fed me. It was they that gave me the very air that I breathed. They gave me life.

‘Yuri, we love you,’ they would say, letters from my mother, father or from my Yana. They gave me all that I needed. They gave me the home that I had left.

I made my first mistake, and the second. I could have never known. They kept mounting and the letters stopped.

I found myself in the Gulag and all I ever thought about was the letters, which I thought I would never see another of again.

The Great Patriotic War ended and I remained in chains. Years passed.

I forgot what time was, it had been so long. My hair had whitened in the time, and sight was nearly gone from my eyes. The suffering was too great. I could not live and I had stopped doing so. All I did was exist for those twenty years in there.

A guard opened the large oak door and placed a manila envelope on the floor and quickly closed the door, returning the room to darkness. I looked upon it with half sightless eyes. I looked at it like that a long while.

It was hours after the door was slammed that I picked it up. I was unsure it was even there in the dim light. I held it up to the slit of day from the top of the door. It tore it open and I immediately saw what was written upon the little sheet within it.

I could have never forgotten my Yana’s sweet hand. I shall not. I saw but four words upon the sheet, but I saw all the love that I had ever known or ever would I know in those four words: ‘Yuri, I love you.’

I cried. I wept like a young child weeps. I still weep as I sit here in the chains. I still weep for the letters…